[verall]

I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power. Chrome is enormous and ubiquitous because maintaining a modern browser is orders of magnitude more difficult than maintaining a chat application.

Why do you think there a many competitors outside China but none in?

[tanilama]

> I think the international opinion is that there is no WeChat competitor in China because people are afraid to step on the toes of those in power

But how can there isn't a WeChat competitor, that actually does all the things WeChat is capable of in US/EU?

Regarding WeChat as if it is another chat application only means you have never been a regular user of it, which is probably true to most HN folks.

WeChat actually has its own embedded WebView within it and JS execution engine also. It also has the whole Paypal counterpart ships with it. The whole WeChat ecosystem is probably on par with the whole Facebook, probably more complex than Chrome I would say.

[filoleg]

> But how can there isn't a WeChat competitor, that actually does all the things WeChat is capable of in US/EU?

For many reasons, but I think a major one is because neither EU nor US (both people and governments) would be cool with all aspects of one's life being functional ONLY by using this one app. Imagine if a WeChat competitor came out in EU/US, and now you cannot use transit without this app at all, or buy things, or get a taxi, etc.

This is extremely anti-competitive and goes even beyond the usual monopoly definition. Major politicians these days run for president on the promise to break down Amazon, Google, etc. And neither of those come even close to the monopolistic reach on the scale that WeChat operates on.

[tanilama]

What you are saying is to provide an explanation why WeChat-like apps didn't and probably are not going to happen outside of China, but it still means there is NO WeChat alternatives outside China.

The reason is not that important however.

The Chinese market is unique, Western economy can't create something like WeChat doesn't mean that its existence is something abnormal.

Chinese companies create something more to the liking of Chinese consumers should get anyone surprised. When it comes to internet, and no one is enjoying natural advantage.

[verall]

I understand WeChat is more comparable to Google services (webview, payments, maps, social platform, chat) in terms of scope, but in America, Google gets challenged in specific areas and loses, like losing social to Facebook after many social media platform attempts.

Why doesn't WeChat get more competitors in just a specific area, like chat, which is a lot simpler, so a company could potentially do it better than WeChat?

WeChat doesn't get that kind of competition in China at all, and it really looks like its because of the government.

[sinxccc]

Some WeChat competitors in China: Chat: Fetion, Doushan, Mi Talk; Social: Soul, Momo; Payment: Alipay, Huawei Pay, UnionPay QuickPass

[yibg]

I don't think there are competitors outside of china for wechat. In messaging space yes, but that's only one aspect of why wechat is popular in china. I don't know of anything anywhere that has the functionality and integration with everyday life that wechat has in China.

Maybe most people only see the outside of china version of wechat, which is primarily just chat. Inside china that's not the case.